OK, so TechCrunch has a video interview with Kent Ertegrul, chief executive of Phorm. (Thanks alphaxion in comments elsewhere.)
We are meeting him on Friday at 1230. Your questions please that you'd like us to ask on his behalf. We'll try to put as many of them as makes sense. Note of course that he answers a number of questions in the interview linked above with Mike Butcher.
You might also find it interesting to peruse the diagrams obtained by The Register showing how the Phorm system would (allegedly) work.
He answers a hacking question: if someone breaks into their database, they'd have a list of random numbers, some categories assigned to them such as "swimming" and timestamps. That, he says, doesn't identify you.
(Note that the best questions aim to extract new information from people, rather than stuff you already know. So "this is evil, isn't it?" works less well than, for example, "Shouldn't users decide whether this is opt-in rather than opt-out?")
Update: Simon Davies of Privacy International has got in touch to point out that PI "DOES NOT endorse Phorm, though we do applaud a number of developments in its process." (His capitals.) "The system does appear to mitigate a number of core privacy problems in profiling, retention and tracking... [but] we won't as PI support any system that works on an opt-out basis."
He adds: "Any claim that PI has "endorsed" Phorm is incorrect. This is not because we don't believe the Phorm technology has some benefits. It does. It's because PI simply doesn't conduct that type of endorsement."
He clarifies that Privacy International *as a whole* did not evaluate Phorm, but that he and Gus Hosein, a senior fellow at PI, did under the aegis of their privacy startup 80/20 Thinking "assess the Phorm technology and processes" to provide a Privacy Impact Statement.
"We were impressed with the effort that had been put into minimising the collection of personal information, and were particularly impressed with the idea that such a system could be established without the need for IP's, retention or profile building."
"We did notify Phorm of a number of danger areas, particularly the notification and consent conditions applied by its ISP partners, however we felt the Phorm process itself warranted praise at a number of key levels. In comparison to, say, the potential of the Google/Doubleclick process, Phorm deserves credit for attempting to create a stronger privacy and anonymisation focus."
OK, so back to the questions for Kent Ertregrul now...
Update: OK, the interview's done. We'll aim to have it up later today (Fri). So no more questions, please..
